


leave the horrors here

by manticoremoons



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Intimacy, Scars, Trauma, also these two have such a big damn hero-crush on each other and i love it, don't tell me dany doesn't have a kink for them, how is this ship the purest thing i've ever seen?, this features the longest sentence i have ever written lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 13:58:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12133971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manticoremoons/pseuds/manticoremoons
Summary: Dany had stopped believing in gods a long time ago....





	leave the horrors here

**Author's Note:**

> i just wanted to write a little slice of these two on the night of boatsex. still trying to get my handle on them. and i just wanted to wallow in how drawn they are to the ~heroism~ they see in each other; how severely traumatised they are but also what survivors they are. they've both seen some shit and done some shit, and all of it has shaped them and it's all those pieces that pull them into each other's orbits. it turned out different than i thought it would but i hope it works. it's probably one of the most pretentious _and_ sappy things i've ever written but go with it.
> 
> i don't own anything except for the mistakes therein (unbeta'd).
> 
> if you're interested, listen to the ever-effective 'spanish sahara' by foals, it's responsible for much of this.

 

Leave your horrors with me, they’re beautiful. Leave all the things you’ve always wanted to forget, and leave everything that hurts. I’ll show you that you’re not crazy. You’re just a little different and I’ve always been a sucker for that.

**R.M. Drake**

 

 

 

Dany had stopped believing in gods a long time ago.

Old or new, many or the One, it made little difference. It was sometime between her wanderings through the Red Waste, where her tongue had burned with thirst, the flesh of her skin blistering and cracking under the scorch of the sun, where death had felt a constant companion, sure as she’d been that she would end up like the other animals trapped on the red sea, a carapace of bones and forgotten stories; and her wandering through the streets of Braavos as a child, pawing through festering rubbish heaps, searching the cobblestone underfoot for coins dropped by unwitting passers-by – the difference between a loaf of bread and nothing for supper; some of the hovels they’d find to squat in; dank, stinking places with nothing but thin matts for beds and the skittering sound of rats in the walls, where she would study Viserys closely before she crept to sleep beside him on the coldest spring nights, hoping she’d find the brother whom she loved and not the hard, vicious dragon.

And so she was loath to look upon _this_ _Jon Snow_ who dozed beside her, his visage somehow younger, soft and even sweet in the shifting light of the brazier by her bed, and believe there was some grand design to this. To the two of them, after all they’d been through on opposite sides of the world, finding each other in this place.

It was silly.

But this didn’t stop her from leaning over, careful not to jostle him awake, to press her lips into the gouged scar on his chest and taste the thrum of his heart. Despite her best efforts not to wake him, he roused with a tired chuckle and husked, “You’ve worn me out, woman—I’m not sure I can go another round just yet.”

Dany giggled, a sound she hadn’t let come out of her mouth in so long she couldn’t remember the last time. “Well, I suppose I will have to allow you some rest—like any well-used steed.”

“You rode me well and hard that last time,” he said, and his callused fingers traced a line down her spine to cup her bottom, and pull her in closer to him. When she lifted her head to look at him there was a smirk curling on his mouth and the embers of lust in his eyes.

She _had_ ridden him with abandon the last time, _fourth_ time that night, bracing her hands on his chest and moving on his cock until they’d both collapsed in a sweaty, panting heap at the foot of her bed. Neither of them had even had the energy to move even as his penis wilted inside her and she felt his release trickle out of her body. She’d felt filthy but in the best way.

“I’ve always been a skilled rider, I’d be happy to remind you of this when you’ve recovered your wits and strength.”

This time Jon laughed outright, a rich warm sound that slid through her veins. It was so rare a sound that she wanted to steal it and place it in a box for safe-keeping. Perhaps she would take it out on occasion when the lines on his face grew too deep or there was that terrifying blankness in his eyes that he’d had while fighting off wights at Eastwatch, remind this sombre king that there were reasons to smile every now and then.

Notching her elbows on his chest, careful not to rest too much of her weight on them, she peered at him. He was an enigma, the King in the North. Every time she thought she understood him, he surprised her with some new, strange foible. She told him as much when he asked why she was staring so.

“You confuse me, Jon.” His name still sounded odd on her tongue. She’d called him thusly in her mind many a time but rarely out loud ( _my lord_ , _Jon Snow_ , _the king in the north, Lord Snow)_. The simplicity of the name belied the complexity of the man who bore it.

“How so?” he asked, there was a soft bafflement in his eyes that endeared her to him. It was as if he couldn’t comprehend a world in which anyone would find him a subject worth studying, worth _wanting_ to know.

“You’re a mystery, a riddle of sorts. Every time I feel I’ve solved you, I am caught anew with more questions.”

“I assure you, I am no mystery, my queen.” That self-deprecation again. The first day they met months before, she’d seen it in the bowed curve of his shoulders as Ser Davos shared his many accomplishments, the faint grimace that marred his face, as if the litany of all he’d survived was something to be ashamed of rather than proud.

It had been perplexing. And even a little infuriating. For the longest time, all Dany had had was a name. A name given to her. She had learned quickly that this wasn’t enough. That she had to _become_. The Unburnt. The Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. The Breaker of Chains. Mother of Dragons. These words, the feats they represented, were what would live on after she was gone—they were, in some respects, all she had besides her three… _two_ dragons. She twitched, an eddy of sorrow as Viserion’s scream echoed through her mind again.

 _And then came this Jon Snow who did not even want to claim who he is and what he has become_?

It had angered her beyond measure that first day. But now, looking at the torn flesh on his torso, scars that told a long story, she understood a little of why he’d wish to run away from himself.

A sense of quiet descended between the two of them in the burnished glow of the cabin. Dany felt no urge to fill it with noise but they both regarded each other, sizing the other up in the way they had that first day they met. But this time with a tenderness to the curiosity, a heady languor in their muscles and bones from all their exertions, a new knowledge. The crash of the sea outside drowned out any other noise, none of the crew yelling at each other on the wind. For all they knew, they could be alone on this sizable ship, the last two souls left in the world. It was a welcome moment of stillness after these weeks, months, years, and a lifetime of moving onwards and on. Dany found that she wanted to hold onto it for as long as possible.

She lifted her hand, and caressed the line of a scar near above his left eye and another, a thin teardrop mark underneath. He let her, leaning into the touch even as he tracked her movements, a wariness to him that hadn’t been there before.

“Where did you get this?”

He waited a beat or two, and she was not sure if he’d answer or not, if he’d brush it off as some mundane accident or nothing at all the way he often did. “That was from a wildling warg I had a difference of opinion with,” he started, his voice tinged with gravel and regret. “They wanted me to cut down a horse breeder to ‘prove’ I was no longer a ‘crow’—a man of the Night’s Watch. I… I couldn’t do it. Even though I knew they’d kill me if they found out I was there under false pretences, that I wasn’t a deserter at all, that I’d kept my vows. Most of them at least. But I couldn’t.” He tilted his head slightly to kiss at her fingers, an absent-minded gesture that made her belly flutter with its sweetness, before he continued, “The man who gave it to me, Orell—we fought. I told him as I stabbed him that I’d betrayed them all. Before he died, he warged into his eagle and attacked me, talons, beak, everything.”

She suspected there were parts of the story he was leaving out. She felt an urge to crane upwards and press her lips to the slightly raised skin at his brow, trail butterfly kisses to the matching scar underneath—and so she did. When she drew back, Jon was watching her again. Still wary but something else, incandescent, that she didn’t wish to put into words just yet. So she asked him, pointing his right brow to another hooked scar, “What about that one?”

He twisted his mouth, trying to remember, and then his eyes lost their lustre with the memory. “That? That was from Hardhome.”

“Isn’t that a….” She wracked her mind for some of her studies of Westeros and the lands beyond the Wall. She’d had a great deal of time to do nothing on the trip from Essos, and had studied the maps of Westeros until she could reproduce them by hand if anyone asked her to.  “A fishing village?”

“Was,” he said with a grim finality. “The Night King took it—doubt there’s any fishing going on there now.”

A thousand ghosts flickered on the shadows of his face before he offered a defeated, grief-struck smile that cut her to the quick.

“I tried—Tormund and I, we took a whole fleet to try and evacuate the people there.” There was a distant look in his eyes as he recounted the story. His fingers, sword-callused and cool, drummed against the small of her back in a halting, uneven rhythm as the words stumbled from his lips. “The Watch didn’t like it, no one did. They all thought the wildlings deserved to die in their hovels beyond the wall; that they didn’t count as the men, and women, and children whom we all pledged to defend and shield from the night. So Tormund and I went. We tried to convince them to come. We didn’t have enough boats, I knew it—but I thought, _at least if we get forty thousand, perhaps forty-five, we’ll have won_.”

Dany watched, transfixed, at the agony and… _fury_ that seemed to radiate off of him with the heat of dragon fire. His eyes shone with it. Jon had been so hard to read when they first met, an often dour figure hovering at her dining table, atop the cliffs at Dragonstone brooding at the sea, inside the council room with his hands folded in front of him, responding to every ask with a firm to the point of uncouth: “No, your Grace.”

But she understood now that she just hadn’t learned _how_ to read him, to see the heaviness of every hurt and failure that bowed his head and furrowed his brow; that made his dark, sable eyes ponderously sad.

“It took us hours to negotiate with the leaders there. They didn’t trust the Watch, you see. And with good reason. But eventually they came around, and we began the evacuation. Slowly at first. Organised, too.” The fingers on the knobs of her spine shook as they continued their odd rhythm. “Then the mist came, pouring through the village with a speed that could only have been made out of evil magic. It all happened so quickly after that—I can barely remember it, just screams. So many screams, and the dreadful silence after each one was choked off. The cold. There were _so many_ children, Dany, I—.”

His fingers had paused then, gripping the skin above her bottom hard enough that it made her wince but she didn’t stop him. He was trapped in the nightmare of his past, and the horror of it wasn’t something she could take away or rub out of existence. She could only be _here_ with him, beside him, allowing him to use her, her body as an anchor while he allowed himself remember.

“We fought, we _did_.”

Dany did not doubt him. She knew he was a man who would rather die than _not_ fight. And she lo—admired that about him.

“I know, my sweet, I know,” she said and this time she crawled until she was perched on top of him and pushed an open-mouthed kiss on that scar. It was a small balm for such a harrowing memory. He trembled beneath her for several minutes before settling into a slack stillness. He didn’t wish to speak of it any longer and so she didn’t ask.

Instead, she slid her lips down his cheeks to the furred jaw and kissed him again before laying her head down on his shoulder, breathing in the earthy scent of him. His strong arms wound around her body in a hard hug as though he was afraid she’d float away like the cruel mists in his dreams. She held on.

Minutes, perhaps longer, later, she caught a glimpse of a small nick on his shoulder, an old scar that was pale with age. She fingered it delicately and asked, “And this one?”

He barked with laughter, and Dany grinned at the precious sound. “You’ll laugh at me.”

“I will not,” she said, scratching at the tiny scar with her blunt nails. “I promise.”

“Hm, well, that was from Mrs Acorn, the family cat—.”

“The family cat?” _Mrs Acorn?_

“All right, a _stray_ cat that lurked in the stables at Winterfell when I was six or so that I _may_ have taken in for a few days before she ran away.”

“Ran away?” Dany bit the inside of her cheek in an attempt to hold back a titter.

“She _had_ to—to go South because of the coming winter,” he declared with confidence. And Dany couldn’t suppress herself any longer, sitting up to look at this unwittingly charming, brave, _silly_ man, she let out a cackle. She didn’t care if whoever slept next door could hear her. Jon’s eyes glittered with mirth. “Maester Luwin said so when I asked him why she’d disappeared.” He even pouted as he said it. He seemed younger than his twenty-two years, a playfulness to him that she’d never seen before.

_Oh, how she loved him._

It did not hit her as a bolt of lightning or sneak into her thoughts like a thief in the night, she simply _knew_ that she did. In a world full of uncertainties and lies, the horrors of war and death, this sole truth made itself known.

She could not help herself then, bowing down to capture his bottom lip in her teeth before she sank into a full-mouthed kiss. Jon met her, lick for lick, his tongue sliding against hers with fervour.

Dany pulled away and drifted down to nibble at his earlobe, a tiny scar there from an accident long ago, no doubt. And further down still to his chest, the marks that stained his skin, many of them must have healed poorly for they truly looked like some devil had dug out pieces of him with sharp claws. At his ribs, she rubbed her lips against the hot skin-covered muscle, felt him clench at her touch before relaxing with a panting breath, more weals that she gave loving attention. An old arrow-shaped scratch on his left arm right above his elbow, she tasted that one too, salt and something bitter that reminded her, peculiarly, of lemons.

As she made her way down, she peeked up at him and the look on his face stole her breath. She had never been on the receiving end of such a look in her life. Surprise and awe, gratitude and not an inconsiderable amount of lust—but something else tender and aching, and even a little fearful.

It was too honest, too open, too _much_.

She understood his fears, after all, she was the one mapping the constellation of scars on his warrior-hewn body, with the worshipful devotion of a priestess. Every kiss a prayer or a benediction, somewhere in between. She couldn’t tell him how she felt, not yet. But she could give this. She could give herself.

When she finally reached his cock, hard already, leaking at the head, she couldn’t resist laving him with her tongue. She took him into her mouth with a smile, catching Jon’s guttural curse. He was a heated brand in her mouth, thick and solid enough to make her gag as she swallowed as much of him as she could fit. The wet slurp as her mouth drifted up so only the tip of him remained, and then down again until he nudged at the back of her throat, careful not to let her teeth catch.

Jon writhed beneath her as though she’d set him on fire, decidedly un-warrior-like whimpers squeezing out of his throat in between impassioned groans and her name. _Dany, oh fuck, Dany, please. Oh gods_.

She liked to hear her name in his mouth just like that, his thick Northern brogue muddled up by lust, she decided.

Wrapping her fingers around the base of his cock, she flicked her tongue at the spit-shiny crown, and it was then that he seized up, the muscles in his thighs tense, and spilled with a loud grunt. She let him fill her mouth with his seed, a salty beery taste that she rather enjoyed as she swallowed.

He didn’t give her much time before he dragged her up his body until she was straddling his stomach and kissed her, rough and hungry, uncaring of the remnants of his release—in fact, that only seemed to make him even more ardent.

She drew back for air, and met his gaze, dark with want. He cupped her breast with one hand as the other homed in on her damp sheath, two fingers slipping inside her while his thumb played with her pearl. She hadn’t realised how much giving him pleasure had done the same for her, she was slick already with desire, and it didn’t take him long. Those knowing fingers of his found a spot inside her cunt that made her buck and hiss. He added a third and fourth, and she felt so full, on the edge of discomfort. But then he ducked to suckle on her nipple, his teeth grazing the over-sensitive skin and she was lost, flinging herself over the edge and bathing his fingers with it.

She sprawled on top of him again, struggling to catch her breath.

 

# ∞

 

“I’ll have to leave soon, go back to my room,” he murmured much later, husky with sleep, as the night crawled towards dawn.

Dany didn’t open her eyes, drowsing as she was beside him, their bodies tangled so well she wasn’t sure where he began and she ended. “I know.”

Jon didn’t move to leave, though. Instead, pulling her in closer, nuzzling at the top of her head. “But not yet.”

She wouldn’t want him to leave later any more than she did now but she knew it was inevitable. They had a war to win, duties to see to, a world beyond the walls of this cabin to fight for. But for now, a moment.

“I had a cat once, too, you know,” she told him. “Tiny thing, a tabby with a patch of white around its eye.”

She had strangely forgotten about Tibby—that’s what she’d called him. A scrawny fighting thing that had only started to like her when she’d left a piece of soaked bread out for him. She smiled, wistful at the memory.

“What happened to it?”

“I had to leave him behind when the assassins found the rooftop Viserys and I were staying on at the time,” she said plainly, shuddering in remembrance. “We didn’t have time to take anything we had with us, just the clothes on our backs. I suppose the only reason we escaped was that we both knew the streets of Braavos well by then, well enough to hide until they grew tired of looking for us. At least for a time.” They had hidden under the docks, that time, among the cutthroats that hawked their illicit wares, the suffocating stench of rotting fish and stale urine and the filth of an entire city’s refuse. She had gripped Viserys’ hand in the dark, crying quietly so no one passing by would hear, petrified.

Jon didn’t say anything to that. But she felt his lips press a soft kiss to her forehead. His arms curled around her, warm and strong, and it felt almost as though he was surrounding her, buttressing her from the elements and anything that might hurt her.

It would be dangerous to succumb to this. She was a queen, she had long ago learned to protect herself from the harshness of the world, to _make herself_ feel safe.

But she let him, even if only for a moment.

 

# ∞

**Author's Note:**

> feedback is a gift.


End file.
